Working on the Smug Thing

As much as I hate to admit this, I have become somewhat of a Smug Married.

I noticed it while listening to a John Mayer CD.

You know the CD… “Room For Squares.” That glorious, wonderful, chunk of early 2000’s that stayed in my CD player for a good 9 or 24 months… (Back before John was a big ol’ douchey douche, of course.)

Anyway, I was listening to it and thinking, “Man, am I glad I don’t have to worry about that stuff anymore.”

“That stuff” meaning:

1. Worrying about someone finding your bloated and lonely body being half-eaten by squirrels three weeks later because no one felt the need to check on you.
2. Having someone dump you and leave you feeling like a Chupacabra sucked out your heart, threw it in a marinade with some meat tenderizer, did a dance on it, then showed it to his friends.
3. Having to dump someone and end up feeling like said Chupacabra.

I mean, really, self?

I felt like a total jerk just as soon as that thought crossed my mind. Because, yeah, as soon as you’re married, you don’t have to worry about relationship stuff at all. Pssssshhhh…

There are a few things I think a lot of us Smug Married’s can learn from our old favorite Single Music…you know, Single Music? The songs that still make you feel that little glimmer of desperation you used to feel when you weren’t happily attached?

Okay, hold on here. I’m not saying that being single means being desperate. I’m just saying that when you’re single (okay, I’m generalizing…let’s just say that this is how I felt when I was single), you carry around this little piece of you (like an emotion-flavored Gusher) filled with desperate curiosity and cosmic begging that can sometimes be triggered to burst by the right kind of music.

If I’m the only one who felt that way, then forgive me…in my defense, I’m a sucker for Baz Luhrman movies and I’ve got a bit of a thing for Victorian Literature.

Aaaaanyway, what I’m trying to say is that marriage does not exclude us from having to work on our relationships. I think that things like bills, babies, budgets, and business make those old lyrics seem trivial, and that’s about as wrong as you can possibly get.

Those singers cranking out that Single Music were worried about relationships…love, hope, happiness, anger, hurt, and longing…Who out there can tell me that they stopped feeling all of those things as soon as they said “I do?”

I’d be pretty surprised if anyone out there raised a hand. Especially if you’re sitting by yourself at your computer, because then you’d probably feel kind of ridiculous.

So let’s all dig out some of our favorite old Single Tunes and refresh our smug little memories, because if you lose all of those old feelings, you’ll get complacent, and complacent people don’t grow. When you don’t grow in your relationship, you’ve got to start watching out for those squirrels…and I get the feeling that they might be pretty ruthless.